John Grisham - The Confession

With a troubled face but an enthusiastic spirit, he faced the cameras and reporters. He condemned the violence and unrest. He promised to protect the citizens of Slone. He announced he was calling in more guardsmen and would mobilize the entire Texas National Guard, if need be. He talked about justice, Texas style. He engaged in a bit of race-baiting by calling on black leaders to rein in the hooligans. He said nothing of the sort about white troublemakers. He ranted and raved, and when he was finished, he ducked away from the microphones without taking questions. Neither he nor Barry and Wayne wanted to deal with the Boyette matter.

For an hour he buzzed around Slone in a patrol car, stopping to drink coffee with soldiers and policemen, and to chat with citizens, and to survey, with a grim and pained face, the ruins of the First Baptist Church, and all the while the cameras were rolling, recording it all for the glory of the moment, but also for future campaigns.

———

After five hours, the caravan finally stopped at a country store north of Neosho, Missouri, twenty miles south of Joplin. After a restroom break and more coffee, they headed north, now with the Subaru in the lead and the other vehicles close behind.

Boyette was visibly nervous, the tic more active, his fingers thumping the cane. “We’re getting close to the turnoff,” he said. “It’s to the left.” They were on Highway 59, a busy two-lane road in Newton County. They turned left at the bottom of a hill, next to a gas station. “This looks right,” Travis kept saying, obviously anxious about where he was taking them. They were on a county road with bridges over small creeks, sharp curves, steep hills. Most of the homes were trailers with an occasional square redbrick from the 1950s.

“This looks right,” Boyette said.

“And you lived around here, Travis?”

“Yep, right up here.” He nodded, and when he did so, he began rubbing his temples. Please, Keith thought, not another seizure. Not at this moment. They stopped at an intersection in the middle of a small settlement. “Keep going straight,” Boyette said. Past a shopping center with a grocery, hair salon, video rental. The parking lot was gravel. “This looks right,” he said again.

Keith had questions, but he said little. Was Nicole still alive, Travis, when you drove through here? Or had you already taken her life? What were you thinking, Travis, when you drove through here nine years ago with that poor girl bound and gagged and bruised, traumatized after a long weekend of sexual assault?

They turned to the left, onto another road that was paved but narrower, and drove a mile before they passed a dwelling. “Old man Deweese had a store up here,” Travis said. “I’ll bet it’s gone now. He was ninety years old when I was a kid.” They stopped at a stop sign in front of Deweese’s Country Market.

“I robbed that place once,” Travis said. “Couldn’t have been more than ten. Crawled through a window. Hated the old bastard. Keep going straight.”

Keith did as he was told and said nothing.

“This was gravel last time I was here,” Boyette said, as if recalling a pleasant boyhood memory.

“And when was that?” Keith asked.

“I don’t know, Pastor. My last visit to see Nicole.”

You sick puppy, Keith thought. The road had sharp turns, so sharp that at times Keith thought they would loop back and meet themselves. The two vans and the pickup stayed close behind. “Look for a little creek with a wooden bridge,” Boyette said. “This looks right.” A hundred yards past the bridge, Boyette said, “Slow down now.”

“We’re going ten miles an hour, Travis.”

Travis was looking to their left, where thick underbrush and weeds lined the road. “There’s a gravel road here, somewhere,” he said. “Slower.” The caravan was almost bumper-to-bumper.

In the van, Robbie said, “Come on, Travis, you sick little weasel. Don’t make liars out of us.”

Keith turned left onto a shaded gravel road with oaks and elms entangled above it. The trail was narrow and dark like a tunnel. “This is it,” Boyette said, relieved, for the moment. “This road sort of follows the creek for a while. There’s a camping area down here on the right, or at least there was.” Keith checked his odometer. They went 1.2 miles into the near darkness with the creek showing up occasionally. There was no traffic, no room for traffic, and no sign of human life anywhere in the vicinity. The camping area was just an open space with room for a few tents and cars, and it appeared to have been forgotten. The weeds were knee-high. Two wooden picnic tables were broken and turned on their sides. “We camped here when I was a kid,” Boyette said.

Keith almost felt sorry for him. He was trying to remember something pleasant and normal from his wretched childhood.

“I think we should stop here,” Boyette said. “I’ll explain.”

The four vehicles stopped and everyone gathered in front of the Subaru. Boyette used his cane as a pointer and said, “There’s a dirt trail that goes up that hill. You can’t see the trail from here, but it’s here, or it used to be. Only the truck can get up there. The other vehicles should stay here.”

“How far up there?” Robbie asked.

“I didn’t check the odometer, but I’d say a quarter of a mile.”

“And what will we find when we get there, Boyette?” Robbie asked.

Boyette leaned on his cane and studied the weeds at his feet. “That’s where the grave is, Mr. Flak. That’s where you’ll find Nicole.”

“Tell us about the grave,” Robbie pressed on.

“She’s buried in a metal box, a large toolbox I took from the construction site where I worked. The top of the box is two feet under the ground. It’s been nine years, so the ground is thick with vegetation. It will be difficult to locate. But I think I can get close. This is all coming back to me now, now that I’m here.”

They discussed the logistics and decided that Carlos, Martha Handler, Day and Buck, and one of the security guards (armed) would stay at the campsite. The rest would pile into Fred’s pickup and assault the hill with a video camera.

“One last thing,” Boyette said. “Years ago this property was known as Roop’s Mountain, owned by the Roop family, pretty tough folks. They took a dim view of trespassers and hunters, and they were notorious for running off campers. That’s one reason I picked this place. I knew there wouldn’t be much traffic.” A pause as Boyette grimaced and rubbed his temples. “Anyway, there were a lot of Roops, so I figure it’s still in the family. If we bump into someone, we better be prepared for trouble.”

“Where do they live?” Robbie asked, somewhat nervously.

Boyette waved his cane in another direction. “A good ways off. I don’t think they will hear or see us.”

“Let’s go,” Robbie said.

———

What had begun on Monday morning with a seemingly routine pastoral conference now came down to this—Keith was riding in the rear of a pickup truck, bouncing up the side of Roop’s Mountain, which was nothing more than a medium-size hill dense with kudzu and poison ivy and thick woods, facing a real chance of armed conflict with surly landowners no doubt high on meth, in the final push to determine whether Travis Boyette was, in fact, telling the truth. If they did not find Nicole’s remains, Boyette was a fraud, Keith was a fool, and Texas had just executed the right person, in all likelihood.

If, however, they found the body, then, well, Keith could not comprehend what would happen next. Certainty had become a fuzzy concept, but he was reasonably certain that he would be home sometime that night. He couldn’t begin to imagine what would happen in Texas, but he was sure he wouldn’t be there. He would watch it all on television, from a safe distance. He was fairly certain events down there would be sensational and probably historic.